It is becoming increasingly clear that despite my fleeting ambitions otherwise, I am most likely going to end up teaching ESL for the rest of my life. It's been my safety net, my fallback plan, often my main career, for the past 6 years. I'm good at it and I enjoy bonding with students and watching them improve. That look that plays across a person's face when understanding dawns is priceless, especially when the thing being understood is useful in daily life or more complex than the person expected to be able to understand. Many ESL teachers treat their adult students like children, which often doesn't go over well. I aim to learn as much from them as they learn from me, and I show them the respect they deserve for working hard to learn another language. I could build many good relationships and be content as an ESL teacher. I guess that's all I can ask for in life.
On March 26, 2009, I left my life in America and moved to South Korea. I put my worldly possessions into two suitcases and a backpack and got on a plane. On December 8, 2012, I returned not to my hometown of Detroit, but to Silicon Valley, California, where I married an Indian engineer. In 2020, I divorced and moved to southern California. In this blog are my successes, failures, and observations of life in different cultures.
